


Watch the wall, my darling

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Anal Sex, Class Differences, Class Issues, First Time, Homophobic Language, M/M, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Racism, Racist Language, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 16:53:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6478336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anquetil and Foley's first time. Because I can, dammit.</p><p>*</p><p>Note: brief mention of physical and psychological abuse of a young child, racism, racist language, homophobic language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch the wall, my darling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fengirl88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/gifts).



> To fengirl88's prompt, Anquetil/Foley: 'things you said under the stars and in the grass' (sorry, no grass!) and 'things you said with no space between us'.

‘―don’t be so beastly parsonical, Rob. It’s mostly legend, anyway. Until he went quite doo-lally, right at the end, they were all stitch-ups, arranged in advance with the skippers and the owners. Barely anybody got hurt. Just a boring old insurance fraudster, when it comes down to it.’

Having dined lavishly on their tinned supplies and exhausted the flagons of cider that were supposed to last them the whole weekend, a weekend infinitely precious to Robert, since his time was so seldom his own, they had moved on to the brandy abstracted from Sir Charles’s cellar (‘Hennessy V.B.O.’, Lewis had said dismissively, explaining to Robert’s look of puzzlement, ‘Very Bloody Ordinary, but it won’t do to get the Guv’nor riled up, not after the book thing’―by which apparently innocuous phrase he referred to the gambling scandal that had got three of his cohort, though, astonishingly, not Lewis himself, expelled from Dartmouth.) It was high tide; the summer night was fair, but the sea beat and slopped heavily against the rocks at the base of the lighthouse; both occupants of the second-floor chamber had a piquant sense of intimate, lamplit seclusion. 

‘Then what is there to be proud of?’ Robert spluttered. He was a rather less experienced drinker than his companion; he had never been what one might call properly tight before. 

Lewis tilted his head and smiled, a demure curve of the lips that reminded Robert of a plate in one of the art master’s glossy German books: da Vinci’s John the Baptist, stepping out of the shadows with a suggestive gesture, like a tart on Byfleet pier. ‘The doo-lally bit, of course. Hell of a way to go, don’t you think? Putting on a tragedy with yourself as hero _and_ mobilising half the county as your supporting cast.’ 

‘Now you’re just being perverse.’ 

‘ _Natch_. You wouldn’t expect any less of me.’ 

Robert’s temporal pulse seemed to pound in time, infinitely slow, with the waves. He took a deep breath and ventured, deliberately, ‘Anyway, it’s all just as wrong―even if only―F-fabian,’ he hiccuped, ‘actually died. Fraud isn’t a―hic―victimless crime. Pe―heople’s lives―are ru―huined.’ He took a deep breath and held it. 

Lewis swirled brandy in his tin cup and reached for the packet of Players on the table. ‘God. You’re such an obedient little product of the system. Take a peasant, give him an education, and you’ve got an educated peasant.’ 

Robert released the breath and took a cigarette at his friend’s offer. This was a familiar, and insofar as it went, comforting line of repartee. ‘Take the fifth son of a baron―het,’ ( _damn_ ) ‘and teach him sea―hee―manship, and you’ve got a duffer who forgets what to do when the boat gybes and the boom knocks a man overboard.’ Friendly vituperation seemed to have succeeded where respiratory exercise had failed. He lit the cigarette and hiccuped again. 

‘Robbie, I’m ser―hious―’ 

‘Oh, fuck _off_.’ 

‘―but I am. What’s the point in someone like you working for Oxford, if you’re just going to keep on with the same pitiful ressentiment, this wretched slave morality of yours―’ 

_Look at his hands_ , Robert thought, _look at his beautiful hands, so you see neither malice nor mute apology in his face, and you know what he’s going to do next, look at his hands_. Warmth drained away from Robert’s scalp and face, and memories rushed in to fill the vacancy: the ordinary playground taunts, _half Frog and half wog_ , the kindly patronage of schoolmasters, the blithe platitudes of Nelson’s School Series upon the character of 'natives', the jaundiced jingo of boys' comic papers, his aunt’s determination to school his animal nature with wooden spoon, belt-buckle and coal-hole, his father’s incoherent homily on the evening he had come to fetch him away from there for good: _your mother was a proud subject of King George, see, don’t let anyone tell you different or that she was lesser nor you or I, she was better, a learned woman, and she wouldn’t have been that but for the Empire, a fine woman and a brave, she would have been that anyway, I never should have―_ the tears starting in his father’s narrow blue eyes and dropping precipitously onto the oaken, splintered fist that enclosed Robert’s tiny, bruised, infant one, that hand that was the same colour as his, the face the same, but was a white man’s hand and a white man’s face, that Robert’s would never be. 

Robert tapped ash from his cigarette, let it rest on the edge of the saucer that served them for an ashtray. _Watch his hands, his beautiful hands, the long, tapering thumb splayed across his right cheek as he takes a drag, watch his hands and listen to the sea._

‘Oh, hell, Rob,’ Lewis’s voice was a distant, aggravating burr, like an interrupted wireless transmission, ‘you can’t possibly think that I meant―it’s Nietzsche, you stupid fucking bastard―’ 

Largely owing to the agency of Jas. Hennessy  & Co., Lewis’s dominant left closed quickly, fortuitously, on Robert’s right wrist. They wobbled for a moment across the corner of the table in an unanchored parody of arm-wrestling; Lewis’s dropped cigarette scorched the deal and harmlessly burnt itself out. 

‘Kiss me,’ Lewis whispered. 

Robert gawped. 

‘Unless,’ Lewis said, bright and loud, ‘you’d prefer to have a good old-fashioned scrap first. Like the fellows in that D.H. Lawrence farrago you lent me. That chapter _was_ quite good, I thought. Isn’t that what you’d like, Robert? To overwhelm me?’ 

There was nothing that Robert wanted more, or had for longer. He had wanted it from the moment he had laid eyes on the scrawny, foot-dangling, fidgety boy whose grey flannel shorts and coat, his snowy shirt closed at the neck with an actual tie, looked almost indecent among the lumpy jerseys and cut-down corduroy jackets of the village school, as if he were barely wearing clothes at all. Robert had returned home for dinner with the fierce, contradictory desire at once to be, to _become_ Lewis Foley, and to possess him, cage him, make him an exotic, sleek, tufted exhibit for Anquetil’s Amazing Circus. He had his wish, in a sense: as the most recent arrival but one, Robert was given the character-forming responsibility of showing him the ropes; they palled about together, making mischief, for the five and a half weeks that Lewis spent there, Little Black Sambo and Little Lord Fauntleroy. And then the next autumn Lewis was removed to a preparatory school befitting his estate. Now Lewis had again put possession beyond reach, by somehow making it a humiliation. Robert’s vocabulary did not yet contain the phrase _rough trade_ , and that wasn’t what went on anyway. Rather than a banal sexual kink turning upon social class, it was an extension, to his very own person, of Lewis’s remarkable gift to tarnish and degrade the thing one coveted most on earth. Robert had a fraction of a moment, a mere beat, to decide how it would be, if desire would enforce his acceptance of servitude. 

‘Why,’ Robert said lightly, though feeling the need to swallow hard, ‘should you have all the fun?’ It was not quite what he wanted, not entirely true to his nature, nor, he sensed, to Lewis’s, but if it put them on an equal footing he would take it, and like it. 

Lewis’s grip loosened. He took two or three shallow, audible breaths, then let go, grinning with a pleasure that the soft light from the kerosene lamp turned maniacal. 

‘Christ, for a moment there I didn’t think you had it in you.’ 

‘Well, then. What are you waiting for?’ 

‘What are _you_?’ Lewis said, but as he did, darted towards him with a fugitive, shy kiss. Rising, Robert caught the back of his neck and returned it bruisingly; Lewis’s mouth opened so easily and pliantly that he felt giddy shoving his tongue into it. With his other hand he caressed the small of Lewis’s back, his arse and taut flank. Lewis was quivering like a whippet; Robert felt a sudden, ungovernable impulse not to touch, but to look at the body he knew, one crucial particular excepted, as well as his own. 

‘Let me see you,’ he mumbled into the hollow under Lewis’s ear, ‘I mean, take off your clothes.’ 

Lewis stepped back, and after kicking off his tennis shoes and hauling his thin jersey over his head with no great grace, started to strip with conscious charm, keeping his eyes on Robert’s as he unbuttoned his shirt, pushing up his vest to caress his stomach and belly; tweaking his nipples; twisting quite unnecessarily at the waist to remove his socks from one foot, then the other, raised delicately behind; reaching into his loose canvas trousers to arrange his cock so that when he undid the fly it sprang out, rather delectably restrained by the fine jersey of the exotic, American garment beneath. He let his trousers drop and rubbed his prick a couple of times before he got it out, pushing the elastic waistband of the briefs to the top of his thighs. He squeezed his right buttock as he frotted himself, smiling his da Vinci smile. 

Robert’s vision dimmed to the grainy monochrome of the art-book plate and his throat tightened. His cock throbbed, a piston driven by the furnace in his belly. 

‘Benefits of a Naval College education, eh?’ 

‘I can think of a better use for your mouth than spouting commonplaces like that. And get undressed, you look absurd, gaping like a hooked cod. The naked always have a social advantage over the clothed, have you noticed? P’raps you wouldn’t get the chance, at board school.’ Lewis wriggled his underpants to the floor. 

‘But―’ Robert said stubbornly, struggling out of his jumper and pulling off his shirt, ‘―do you?’ 

‘Do I what? Do hurry up. I’ll lose my stand altogether in this frigid air.’ He showed no sign whatever of doing so; his prick, with its odd, rakish tilt, was as hard as Robert’s own. ‘Heat insulation―the things one’s potty ancestors unaccountably don’t think of when they build their phallic symbols―’ 

Robert stepped out of his trousers, careful to discard at the same time his embarrassingly ragged drawers. ‘At Dartmouth, do you?’ he persisted. 

‘Robbie, don’t be tiresome.’ 

Robert knelt on the bare boards and took Lewis’s hand from his cock, kindly but firmly, as if it were a delicate device that he couldn’t bear to see mishandled by an amateur, and closed his mouth about it. Sure of nothing beyond his fantasy of someone (come off it, of _Lewis_ ; it was only ever Lewis) doing this to him, he dutifully enacted that, grabbing handfuls of Lewis’s bony arse and opening his throat to admit Lewis's spongy, silky cockhead. It made his eyes water slightly, but the reflex action was weak in him, as the need to manage and direct another’s responses was strong. And very congenial too was the flood of obscene affection from Lewis’s lips. Even the sharp, acetic reek of the rough hair in Lewis's groin was delicious, because it was Lewis’s. Robert cupped Lewis’s balls in his palm and let his fingers stray into the space behind them, at which he cried out and pulled back. 

‘Christ, Rob. _Stop_. Do that and I’ll spill in less than a second.’ 

Robert sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth. ‘Will you?’ he said, interestedly. 

‘Yes, dammit,’ Lewis exhaled. ‘Don’t you know―well, I’ll be hanged. I think it’s rather unfair of you, though, being a natural at so many things.’ 

Robert grinned wanly. He supposed he had his answer, and while he couldn’t have expected any different, it smarted as only something that you believe you have thoroughly prepared yourself for can. He had, he reflected, never had a better excuse to wipe his eyes of tears. He got to his feet. 

‘Would it have mattered, anyway?’ 

‘Would what?’ 

‘If you had've went off in my mouth just then.’ 

Robert’s face warmed for his grammar as much as his gaucherie, but Lewis’s laugh was pleasant, faintly self-deprecating. ‘It would if you want me to bugger you, darling. Some fellows bounce back fairly quickly. I expect you do, you’re the type.’ He emphasised this with a confirmatory feint at Robert’s drooping prick. ‘I―don’t. I could get a bit stiff again in ten minutes or so, but nothing like enough to fuck. It seems to take more out of me than other men.’ He somehow made the small infirmity sound rather glamorous, evidence of an extraordinarily fine sensibility. His grey eyes narrowed to black slits. ‘That _was_ what you meant, wasn’t it? When you said why should I have all the fun?’ 

‘Yes, it’s what I meant.’ Slightly at a loss, Robert took him by the shoulders and kissed him, lips, jawline, neck. Murmuring appreciation, Lewis took hold of Robert’s cock and worked it gently, deftly, back to a high hard twitch, but within Robert’s uncertain control. ‘Still sure?’ Lewis asked softly. ‘I’ll want a return engagement at the earliest inst., by the way. Knew you were well-hung, but this is _ridiculous_.’ 

Suspecting flattery and shamefully willing to accept it, Robert gulped, ‘Am I?’ 

‘Oh, Lord, yes. Not the biggest I’ve ever seen. That belonged to―well, a gentleman doesn’t say, I think. But absolutely the nicest.’ 

Lewis had a knack for compliment; this ingenuous manner was not even among his higher arts, but insofar as enlargement was possible, Robert swelled with pride. 

‘Clear those few things from the table, my dear, and sling yourself over it. I’ll just be a moment.’ 

Robert did so, trepidatious of what he was not sure: he could tolerate a great deal of physical discomfort, and no-one who could not bear the emotional sort had any business spending time with Lewis Foley. Behind him, he heard a locker open and shut, then another. There was a drop of brandy not far from his nose, about the size of a penny, near enough to smell, and a little farther off, the scorched spot where Lewis's cigarette had fallen. He remembered that they had both been drunk. He supposed they still were, but the swimming feeling and the hiccups seemed a long time ago. The tide was receding now; he listened to its sucking, withdrawing grumble. Lewis’s footsteps crossed the room. He put a small object at his feet. 

‘Oh, God, _yes_.’ He lay his hands, his beautiful hands, on Robert’s arse-cheeks, stroked and parted them, slapped them gently, then hard enough to sting, then with his cock. ‘You’ll want to frig yourself, probably,’ he said, as if Robert had forgotten something improbably basic; it was, Robert thought, exactly the crisp tone he himself used when Lewis forgot something improbably basic. Lewis held his buttocks apart and grunted salacious admiration, rubbing his cock along the crack. Robert steeled himself, realising the profound inutility of that manoeuvre at exactly the moment Lewis said, ‘Don’t tense up. It won’t help. Here.’ 

Robert sensed him drop to his knees. He could not―surely could not mean to―he hoped desperately that his last exercise with Bronco paper had been more than usually thorough. Robert would have been pushed to say whether he had more pleasure in the circling, hard-held, pointed tongue, dipping deeper than he had imagined possible, and the hot breath inflaming his spit-wet hole, or the knowledge that Lewis Foley was quite literally licking his arse, and demonstrating a fair degree of relish for the job. At length Lewis got up again. 

Robert felt he ought to say something, but it seemed rather a peculiar position from which to offer gratitude or encouragement, so he glanced shyly over one shoulder and murmured, ‘Lewis.’ 

‘Mm?’ He was working his thumb into his palm―oh, thought Robert, feeling a clot and understanding a few more of the jokes he’d uneasily laughed at in the company of schoolfellows, _Vaseline_ ―with the look of gentle absorption that took him when he was doing one of the very small number of things that did not bore him almost instantly: sodomy, Robert supposed, could be added to chess, tinkering with crystal sets and high-diving. Robert thought Lewis was beautiful always, but concentration lent his regular, agreeable features an especial radiance: he might have been a different person from the obdurate champion of his infamous ancestor. Robert didn’t want to have to stop looking at him―not, especially not, now. 

He explained the situation. ‘Is there―I mean. I want to see you―me.' 

‘What? Come here.’ Robert felt the efficient pressure of the greased thumb and caught his breath as it slipped into him. ‘Oh, Robbie, _yes_. May I fuck you now?’ 

He made another, more coherent attempt. ‘Please, Lewis―but I want to _see_ you do it.’ 

‘That’s really quite a little thing of yours, isn’t it?’ He sounded amused. ‘Me, I watch the wall, my darling, as the Gentlemen―well, there the analogy breaks down, since one wants them to come in. But I suppose I would be like that, wouldn’t I? And you _would_ be quite the other way. As you please. If you don’t mind lying on the table like―yes, like that, and lift your―’ 

There was one jagged spasm of something too exciting to be called pain, then a milder jab, and Lewis was bollock-deep inside him. He talked constantly as he thrust; much of his commentary anticipated what he had called the return engagement, which was more gratifying, to Robert, than the somatic aspect of the business. His cock had shrunk rather; he squeezed it, embarrassed; if he had known that would happen, he might not have suggested this posture, which was even more ignominious than the other. Not that Lewis, whose rattle had become a litany of affirmatives, seemed to care. No, Robert thought, it was worth it, it was worth it now, to see Lewis’s face darkened with effort, his fine, smooth hair tumbled forward on his brow, the musculature of his arms drawn by the tension of supporting Robert’s hips and shaded by puddled, flickering light and shadow, his torso, spare, slim and the colour of damp sand, framed by Robert’s browner thighs. Suddenly the detached, almost abstract satisfaction of seeing Lewis unrestrained, unchecked, _unmade_ , became an exquisite, melting excruciation of the body; but it was Lewis who came, with a shrill noise forced through gritted teeth. 

‘Oh. Jesus Christ. Fucking hell. Sorry.’ Lewis withdrew (a slick, deflating sensation more disagreeable than anything that had come before it), cradling his own cock. Robert sat up slowly, brought his feet down to the floor, and gathered Lewis into his arms. He held him as he shuddered out the rags and tatters of his climax, feeling a compassion so vast it could hardly be understood without blasphemy. Robert didn’t care whether Lewis finished him or not; Lewis, for whom the question was merely one of manners, administered a few tugs so brisk Robert thought he might as well have done it himself. Defiantly regarding him over his hand, Lewis licked the spunk from it. 

‘You little devil. You imp of filth,’ Robert said, and kissed it out of his mouth. 

They tried, that night, to sleep in the same bunk. Abandoning the attempt as hopeless around dawn, Robert proposed and undertook the return engagement on the floor of the upper bedroom. It set the tone, far more than the first, for many subsequent episodes, in the lighthouse and out of it. In a lifetime of private promises, Robert broke no more than a handful, and only one repeatedly. That was his resolution to have nothing to do with Lewis after Operation Fireweed; he transgressed it flagrantly, and it had to be said, in spectacular style. When Robert fucked him for the last time, Lewis had already been passing secrets to Britain’s enemies for several months; Robert would pay dear, with his liberty and then with the long grief of exile, for his compulsive, helpless, instinctual response to Lewis Foley’s physical presence. But there was never less space between them than on that night, the first that they were united in their Folly.

**Author's Note:**

> Leonardo da Vinci's[ John the Baptist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Saint_John_the_Baptist_C2RMF_retouched.jpg). Also relevant: [Salaí's parody](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Angelo_Incarnato.jpg).
> 
> Lewis quotes Kipling's [A Smuggler's Song](http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_smuggler.htm).


End file.
